Chapter 55
Death
“Cat,” I gasped, rushing past the dense trees of Rosalind Woods just as Violence forced a kiss on my wife. Although… from this angle, it looked like she kissed him voluntarily. But Cat would never. Violence had controlled her, manipulated her, and rage seethed in my chest at the thought.
I moved faster than ever, as if rage gave me the strength I’d been missing for months, and I reached Cat just as Violence choked and dropped to the ground. And a pulse went through the world. A ripple, like impact across a still lake.
I froze within touching distance of Cat, stunned into stillness. He was dead. She’d killed him… with a kiss. How?
Tor blurted that exact question, grabbing Cat’s shoulders and hauling her against him, the two of them now coated in mud. “How?”
“My venom,” she rasped in a daze.
I drifted closer, scanning her face, her body, marking every fresh bruise and injury, noting the way she held her shoulder stiffly and wasn’t resting any weight on her ankle. All things that made me want to rip Violence from true death and beat the shit out of him. But he was dead. It was over.
“You did it,” Pain said, shell shocked and pale. “You—got my heart back.”
Cat’s shoulders slumped in relief. “I didn’t know if it would work, or if he’d see what I’d done and—”
Pain wrapped her in a tight hug, his face pressed to her shoulder. “It worked. I’m whole again.”
“Bye, bye motherfucker,” Madde crowed victoriously and kicked Violence’s dead face.
I moved closer, a strange looseness in my chest at the sight of Violence truly dead, at the stillness that settled over the lake. At least until the other gods figured out what Cat had done and burst into noise.
“I’m so fucking proud of you,” Miz breathed, stealing Cat from Pain and folding her into a hug.
“We’re still branding this prick with all the bad things he’s done, right?” Madde asked, kicking Violence one last time and joining their hug and peering around.
I drifted closer, stroking my fingers through Cat’s hair—
She shivered. And I realised with a punch to my gut that I hadn’t had fingers minutes ago. Hadn’t had any limbs; the decay had turned them to mist. But now I could run my fingers through Cat’s hair, squeeze her shoulder, and I thought she’d done it. A kiss to save Death. I thought she’d saved me.
But a small, twisted sob burst from Cat, and she covered her mouth with both hands.
“Where is he?” Miz demanded, searching the banks of the lake over and over. “Where’s Death?”
I’m right here.
But they couldn’t hear me.